Personal views. Interested in climate/energy nexus. Sometimes chess-related content. "Trust me, I am an engineer". https://xitter.cf/t.co/L7A4Z1Fi5i

Joined June 2014
Blaz Bratovic retweeted
After Pierre Poilievre lost 18 months ago, I shouted from every rooftop that Trump was a danger for the international right. At the time, the message was unpopular and I was called a liberal, but people finally saw the obvious. spectator.com/article/donald…
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I strongly recommend listening to this. 👇 Anyone familiar with Russia will find little here surprising. Neither Putin nor his cronies conceal their worldview or political intentions. On the contrary, they communicate them consistently and openly. They clearly regard Trump and his envoys as “useful idiots” (полезные идиоты). Russian political vocabulary has a term for precisely such people: politicians, commentators and artists incapable of recognising that Russia regards them as enemies and wishes them ill, yet willing to support it against their own obvious interests. The contempt is not confined to Putin and his cronies. Russians beyond the Kremlin also regard Trump and his special envoys as idiots. And not without reason.
How is Donald Trump’s criticism of President Zelensky interpreted in Moscow? “Moscow perceives these words as a mandate to continue military pressure,” writes one Russian paper. I ask Muscovites to name one word that’s important to them, & read what Russian schoolkids are taught about “defence of the Motherland.” #ReadingRussia
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
It is possible that the rumors relating to a new batch of European-made Stormshadow / SCALP EG missiles to Ukraine might be true. Another factory in Russia has been struck this afternoon, this time in Yelets, Lipetsk region. Several impacts have been reported. The area has been cordoned off and ambulances are rushing in. This comes only 2 days after a factory belonging to Russia's military industrial complex in Oryol was targeted and shot ablaze.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
If these numbers persist, Germany is on track to become the largest supplier of Patriot ammunition to Ukraine, solely through the PAC-2 GEM-T production being launched in Germany. Additional funding via PURL and JUMPSTART clearly underlines this development. Germany has already placed an order for 600 PAC-2 GEM-T missiles for Ukraine, to be manufactured at the factory opening in Germany, at a cost of a staggering €3.2 billion. These are due to be delivered between 2027 and 2031, i.e. an average of 120 per year (although deliveries will, of course, start off more slowly). In addition, Germany continues to provide regular funding for the purchase of additional Patriot ammunition, in particular US-manufactured PAC-3 missiles, via PURL and JUMPSTART. Most recently, in June 2026, Germany provided funding for PAC-3 missiles worth $200 million via JUMPSTART and for additional missiles for air defence systems via PURL, also amounting to $200 million. In addition to this, it is also to be expected that small batches of PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles (single to low double-digits) will be supplied from Bundeswehr stocks from time to time, as has been the case on several occasions this year.
⚡ Ukraine received only 24 Patriot air defense missiles from the US over the last 90 days, President Zelenskyy revealed. He stressed that Washington is withholding authorization for missile shipments, despite the munitions being largely financed by European allies.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
The Kremlin, Elon and Catturd all agree and stand with the people against the elites.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
The more realistic answer is probably allied scale. Not easy, but much more plausible than quadrupling the US population.
Palmer Luckey warns America cannot compete with China’s population advantage forever through innovation alone: “We need 1 BILLION Americans minimum. Probably more like 2 or 3 billion.” 🇺🇸🇨🇳 “Yes, we need to get our act together. We need to do better at manufacturing, at defense, all these things. But everything is just biting around the margins if we’re 350 million people and they’re 2 billion people who are roughly the same. How exceptional do we have to be to achieve a 10-to-1 ratio forever, in perpetuity? It’s not practical. It’s not logical. I would say it’s even possibly a racist thing to believe that we can be so much better than China and the Chinese people that we’ll just beat them with a tiny fraction of the population. We need to do better with what we’ve got. But we also just need a lot more people. We need 1 billion Americans minimum, probably more like 2 or 3 billion, with better demographics and better natural resources. The Dutch once had the most powerful navy in the world. They didn’t lose that position because they fell behind on factories or shipbuilding. They became economically irrelevant.” Both countries are competing with respect to declining birth rates. Both nations must be more willing to have children and expand the population growth exponentially over the next decade. The current economic path is unsustainable if our labor force begins to shrink even with artificial intelligence on the rise.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
The author won a Nobel Prize for his work, so one could hardly call it “underrated,” but I wish more people would read this book. It tells the story of a single Bosnian village by a river over about four centuries, from Ottoman rule until the onset of World War I, and provides what I think is the best account of what modernization meant for Europe.
what's 20th century's most underrated book?
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Must be quite confusing for the ordinary Russian
"It's Europe that is our main enemy. The Germans, the French, the Poles." Following the diesel deal with the Trump administration, Russian state propaganda is recalibrating its message.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
The EU has a new pressing task: finding an additional €70 billion to fill Ukraine's financial shortfall next year. It's an enormous sum that can only be raised in two ways: by issuing joint debt or tapping the Russian assets. My analysis. euronews.com/2026/10/20/ukra…
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
This is something people need to understand: Trump doesn’t have the internal and external politics for the deals he, and his circle, want to make with Russia.
Economic normalization requires the EU to lift its sanctions regime, and it is doing the opposite: passing more packages. Moreover, secondary sanctions relief assumes Congress is going to lift all CAATSA and Graham-codified sanctions (waivers only get you so far). As of 2025, Europe has been bearing almost the full financial burden to assist Ukraine across all sectors. Is it doing that just so Russia can benefit from the military and/or political domination of the country it invaded and so Trump, Putin and Xi can carve up the world into spheres of influence? Trump’s diesel scheme benefits no one outside Moscow and Miami, but the real sunk cost losers for what he’s trying to do are 452 million people abroad. Who are being told to buy American or else.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
As a Russian satellite shadows a U.S. satellite in orbit, remember this began more than a decade ago with both Russia and China testing and deploying weapons in space. One of our first warnings here:
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Hu Xijing's post today is very interesting. Hu wrote in this vein years ago, praising Europe's awakening to “US sabotage of its autonomy”. The difference today is that Washington is doing the wedging for him. It may also signal Moscow. Public praise for Ukrainian resilience tells the Kremlin that Beijing has options and should not be taken for granted, even as Putin courts Trump. The striking concessions are in the second paragraph. Hu frames the war as Ukraine freeing itself from Russian influence. That grants Ukraine agency and acknowledges Russian imperial intent. China wants Russia neither defeated nor strengthened by a deal with Washington, and a Europe independent of the US serves that better than even a Europe divided. But note the lens: it's always the US. Of course, Hu, the former Global Times editor-in-chief, is a tolerated but unofficial voice; his posts may or may not gauge Beijing's mood, and they do not signal policy. Interesting nevertheless.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
NEW: France has dropped its opposition to the UK being included in the EU’s “Made in Europe” legislation as long as the British government aligns with the bloc’s position over tariffs on Chinese EVs. In a breakthrough for Andy Burnham, Paris on Thursday came round to backing Germany, which has always supported the UK’s calls to be designated European for the purposes of the Industrial Accelerator Act. The legislation, which is in its draft stage, is designed to protect domestic manufacturing from cheap Chinese competition. According to a joint Franco-German paper seen by the Guardian, the two countries are now proposing that for the car industry specifically the UK could be included in the "Made in Europe" scheme. @lisaocarroll reports theguardian.com/world/2026/o…
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
The results of a Ukrainian Neptun strike from overnight. Russian glide bombs remain a serious problem for Ukrainian brigades on the front line, and Su-34M bombers are a priority target.
🔻 Satellite images of 🇷🇺 Borisoglebsk Air Base as of October 15, 08:25 UTC On the night of October 15, several Su-34 were destroyed at Borisoglebsk Air Base.
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
EU leaders have just finished their discussion on China, over a 1 hr 45 minute-ish lunch. Von der Leyen presented findings from talks with China Politico says that she recommended launching the safeguards I reported this morning, in chemicals and industrial
NEW: Emboldened by hybrid car deal, Europe coalesces around a tougher China stance The mood in Brussels has hardened this week. The place is awash with the notion that standing up to China might actually work A long read from me ahead of today's EUCO scmp.com/news/china/diplomac…
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
This exchange between Russian Yandex and the Ukrainian missile company Firepoint.
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If confirmed, this is telling: Russian data centres get hit, and online activity around AfD suddenly plummets. 📉 So much talk about German patriotism… then the connection from Russia goes down. 🤔🇷🇺
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Dnipro OSINT analysis of satellite imagery indicates the October 2 drone strike on Russia’s Volgograd refinery seriously damaged three primary oil processing units: ELOU-AVT-1, AVT-6 and AVT-3. Preliminary estimates suggest around 70% of the plant’s primary processing capacity was disabled. #Russia
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中国共産党が1989年6月4日、天安門広場で学生運動を武力弾圧した未公開の衝撃映像が、ついに明らかになった📺 英国ITNが30年間封印してきたオリジナル映像が、ついに解禁された🔓
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Blaz Bratovic retweeted
they say europe doesn’t innovate
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